Passager’s annual poetry contest closes April 15. On this episode, poems from past Poetry Contest issues.
6 minutes
TRANSCRIPT
Passager’s annual poetry contest closes April 15. On this episode, poems from past Poetry Contest issues.
We’ll start with Susan Jo Russell’s “Hearing Cards Shuffled on the Train from New York to Boston” from Passager’s 2001 Poetry Contest Issue.
When I was eight, I learned from you
the feel of the stiff edges letting go.
My card-sized hands fumbled, thumbs struggled
for control, but I practiced and I grew.
I remember the intake of breath and the slow
peek at a brand new hand, the anything-can-happen
of drawing a card from the deck, the exquisite
moment of pretense before announcing, Go
Fish! And one day I did it — like a professional, you said —
falling one by one, gathering speed like wings
of hummingbirds — a perfect, interlocking blur.
I hear it again, a few seats ahead.
It might be anyone. It might be you,
close in the rattling night, dealing a hand or two.
Susan Jo Russell’s “Hearing Cards Shuffled on the Train from New York to Boston” from Passager’s 2001 Poetry Contest Issue.
Next, two poems about medicine, sort of. First from Passager’s 2009 Poetry Contest Issue, “When the Aspirin Bottle Is Empty” by Joyce La Mers.
Pain can be gentle,
a soothing friend
that comforts and sustains.
Welcome the old companion
with whom you can relive
the moments of your life,
the day by day erosions
you’ve survived. Let
twinge of stiffened knee,
unsteady heart, nudge
missing parts together,
reminding of a time
when you were whole,
connecting all you were
with who you are.
“When the Aspirin Bottle Is Empty” by Joyce La Mers.
And this, from the 2010 Poetry Contest Issue by Liz Abrams-Morley: “My Doctor Prescribes Potassium Pills.”
Or, he says, a banana a day and I’m
seeing my long-dead mother
each time I reach for the fruit she taught me to eat
to settle a roiled stomach.
How often she’d say she was, herself,
allergic to bananas, though yellow,
the color of optimism, was the color she craved each spring. Yellow forsythia,
yellow sun, yellow on a mild fruit she once called
toxic, my often silent mother.
Now yellow warblers blur past my streaked kitchen window,
a goldfinch dips, flies off. All gray winter:
Mother in her room, face to a white wall.
I learned to nourish myself.
“My Doctor Prescribes Potassium Pills” by Liz Abrams-Morley. Liz was an honorable mention in the 2010 contest, but ten years later in 2020, she was Passager’s Poetry Contest winner.
Here’s a poem from that 2020 Poetry Contest issue, “Kudzu” by Joyce S. Brown.
Kudzu has taken over my street,
covering trees on either side,
high wires heavy laden.
When I drive beneath, I’m sure
those wires will crash to the hood
of my car. I will die. My husband
will marry a woman who wears
make-up and plays bridge.
My dog will bite strangers.
The house I love will be sold
to the strangers my dog has bitten.
They will tear it down and build
one they like better.
I will be part of the great OM, at one
with the Universal Spirit, aware
at last, that there is no stopping
the world’s kudzu. We all belong to it.
“Kudzu” by Joyce S. Brown from Passager’s 2020 Poetry Contest Issue.
Also appearing in the 2020 Poetry Contest Issue was a poem by Jean Esteve. Passager published one of Jean’s poems in its first Poetry Contest Issue back in 1992. In her 2020 submission letter, Jean referred to her earlier publication, “back in the 1990s, when I was still a twerp in my seventies.” Here’s that twerp’s poem, titled “Short Poems,” from Passager’s first Poetry Contest Issue.
“Your cousin mentioned that you wrote poems.
What kind of poems would that be?”
asked he.
“What kind?”
“You know, what sort?”
Oh . . . short,
I said, very short. I write short poetry.
If I stand up straight I reach just five feet,
I try very hard therefore to keep
The heap of words within my reach.
“Well, that’s a relief,” he said.
“Short Poems” by Jean Esteve from Passager’s first Poetry Contest Issue, published in 1992.
The 2021 poetry contest closes April 15. And unlike the IRS, we’re not extending the deadline. For details, go to passagerbooks.com and click on “submit” at the top of the page.
To subscribe to Passager or to learn more about Passager and its commitment to writers over 50, go to passagerbooks.com.
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For Kendra, Mary, Christine, Rosanne, and the rest of the Passager staff, I’m Jon Shorr.
